Fighting to Find the Art in My Invisible Pain.

martinak15

Disappointing Artist

When people find out I have a BFA, the first thing they ask is, "do you still paint?" In my heart I believe yes but I have no canvas to show them. So, I usually say no. They seem so disappointed, like I have given up or in. I would love time to paint again but painting time is a luxury I don't have right now. Maybe later. But that doesn't mean the artist in me is not active. Once you label yourself an artist you see art in everything. It's a continuum. Well, at least I'm trying to see art in everything. But finding art in my pain is difficult. I am not a masochist so this is going to be difficult.

Pain Horizon

Stephen Groeneveld

It just happened and hasn't stopped happening. One day everything was different; no accident to blame, no satisfactory diagnosis to help understand, no doctor with insight or intrigue. It's rare, I've never met anyone with my condition, let alone a doctor who has met someone. This invisible pain is lonely and impossible to explain.

Invisible Pain

Invisible, because it can't be seen. Invisible, because after 6 years I have learned how to fake it. I smile and present an engaged demeanor. Invisible, because I don't wear a sign that says, "I'm currently experiencing a 6 on my pain scale." A sign might help my closest of allies, my wife, but it will only isolate me further as they will treat me as fragile. As I write, this I'm a 7. Could you write with a pain level of 7? My tolerance has gone way up. The pain is here and I need to live on so the level matters not. It just is.

Dru!

Distraction via Pain

I'm not fragile, I'm just occupied. I'm constantly struggling for continuity of thought. The pain is like a child that just keeps asking why when all you want to do is get dinner cooked. It takes energy to fake it, push through it, and ignore it. So I often arrive home crushed. Safety! But those who live with me have to carry some of my load. So they have an invisible suffering too.

Art in My Pain

Lee Morley

So now, as of today, I am committed to finding the art in the pain. I live in an altered state therefore I can see some things more clearly and others I struggle with. What is important in life is easy for me to articulate as the pain informs me. Will I remember this current decision in 40 years? Does it matter on that time scale? The little things need to fall away and I am working on that. So the art lies with in each interaction and decision I create. Beauty comes with a life well lived. Art is a luxury I can afford but it may not be art for others. This is art for myself and their it remains.

Transcending Pain and Running through light.

Recently I started running.  I wanted to see if I could reduce my rare chronic pain disorder through fitness.  I've poo pooed on running 95% of my life.  I used to joke, "What's the point?  You just end up where you started."  I was ignorant.

I run in a local park I can reach by foot from my house that has a few trails.  Running with cars sucks.  Running with trees, birds, water, and sky is bliss.  Last night to beat the heat, I went for a run by moon light in the park.  Mind you the heat index at 12:30 am when I left was still in the upper 80's.  It was a 3/4 moon and I got more than I requested.

The run to the park is boring.  About a mile of necessary sidewalk to reach the wooded trail.  I turned down the trail and about 100 yards in I saw joy.  The light of the street lamps now gone, I was swallowed by the fireflies.  Their numbers were staggering.  I was immersed in a blanket of blinking lights that stole my breath.  I was swimming.  I was floating.  I was gliding like a spaceship through a sea of stars going supernova.  Each one bursting with light only long enough to pick out an individual and then it was gone.  Gone forever.  I was free falling.  I put my hands up like you do on a roller coaster when you are a child.  I had no voice to scream.  It didn't make sense anyway.  Bullfrogs cheered with their deep voices like it was the most awesome fourth of July fireworks presentation.  Crickets chirped with a deafening harmonic.  And so I leaped.

I leaped up and out.  I leaped deep and in.  I leaped to thoughtlessness.  My mind was quiet.  I left my pain with the body so I had escaped it too.  I thought of nothing.  I just witnessed from within and out.  For 400 yards I was neither here nor there.  I wasn't even.  I was gone.  Then I made the left I always do and climbed up and away from the scene of the crime.  It was over.

With the fireflies gone, the bullfrogs silent and the chirps missing I slipped back into myself.  But I had the pain of the run.  So I focused on that.  I focused in a positive way.  I have chronic pain so this was nothing in comparison and I focused on it only to keep me from replaying my days.  I wanted to be someplace with out worry and the focus on the pain was helping.  The dark was playing tricks on me now.  I was in the woods and my mind was filling in the blanks my eyes failed to sense.  Figures and shapes appearing in the black.  I climbed up and up.  Suddenly and unexpectedly, I had arrived at my destination.  I didn't know I was going here but there I was.

I stood on the hillside peering over an unobstructed view of the park.  The fireflies were now a hundred feet below me.  Dense.  Very dense.  I was here on the hill and there in the prairie with the fireflies.  I was also touching the moon and swimming in the lake.  I stopped running.  I didn't want to move on.  I wanted to build a house right there and move in.  It was lonely, like I needed to be.

I think of the fireflies on my windshield differently now.